THE OVERSEAS CLUB.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXIX, Issue 147, 14 August 1911, Page 7

THE OVERSEAS CLUB.

o Within the last year a club lias been formed that may have an important effect on imperial relations, political and social. This is the Iversons Club, which has already a membership of nearly 50,000 British subjects, and 1800 branches either formed or forming, all over the world. At the first meeting, field in London recently, sixty-two of these branches were iepresented in the 300 people who attended, and the speeches wore full of confidence in the future of the club. How far the movement had spread was shown by a letter from a lonely lighthouse keeper in the far-off Falkland Islands, wishing it success. jTlie chairman said the success of the club gave them renewed confidence, in the future of the Empire. During the past ten months he had perused some thirty thousand letters from members all the world over, probably tiro most remarkable .correspondence ever received. / One and all proclaimed their belief that the moment was ripe for a broader, more intelligent, and far-seeing conception of Empire than the woild had yet realised. Lord Northcliffo said he was sure the colonial members present would fully realise that “this Old Country of ours, which We are so fond of critising, so much so that it had become a habit,” was a live Power. He drew members’ attention to a man of the world, w ith dots here and there showing where the club’s members were—in such places as the wilds of West : Africa, Mauritius, and Pekin—and ■ emphasised the commercial and polit’cal value of such an organisation. Mr Harry Brittain, who successfully I organised the Press Conference, gave ! the meeting some sound, practical adj vice. “Two things wo in this Empire 1 have got to strive after most are to

see each other and hear from each other. With regard to the latter, we are debarred by the very high cable rates all over the Dominions. Some vise man said, ‘You cannot vuc an Empire at Is a wind.’ The cable rates will never be reduced until the Ministers at Home and in the Dominions are badgered and badgered. And, gentlemen, you are the people to do it.” Fifty thousand people combining in this work of badgering should produce some resnl j.